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“You're never deleting that name, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

“I’m reconsidering everything I said tonight about being attached to you.”

“Too late.”

His hand slips around my waist, drawing me closer, and I tilt my face up just as he bends toward me. The kiss is nothing like the one in the car. His lips move slowly over mine while the city hums around us and the jacket hangs too large from my shoulders.

I curl my fingers into the front of his vest and kiss him back, and for one perfect moment, there is nothing but Nate and me.

Then someone says my name.

“Sloane?”

Every muscle in my body locks. I know that voice.

I know the exact cadence of it, the slight lift at the end as if he’s already decided I owe him an answer. Nate pulls back, his hand staying firm at my waist.

Slowly, I turn.

Beneath the gold lights of the valet stand, Preston Lane stands watching us.

thirty-seven

Conflict of Interest

Sloane goes rigid beside me. The subtle shift in her posture is the only warning I get before I follow her stare to the man standing near the valet stand.

Preston Lane. His name surfaces in my mind before she speaks it—a problem I’d already researched, quantified, and categorized.

He looks polished in the way men do when they believe appearance substitutes for substance. Custom suit. Shoes that haven’t yet touched pavement. A woman on his arm whose presence he treats as an accessory rather than a companion.

His gaze drifts over Sloane in that burgandy dress; lingering, entitled. A cold, precise anger settles in my veins. I could dismantle him with a sentence. One clipped remark about his father’s pending merger, one reference to the offshore accounts his family pretends don’t exist, and his life would crumble.

Men like him operate on borrowed confidence; it shatters easily.

But this isn’t my moment to claim. It’s hers.

So I wait. Let him hang himself with the rope he doesn’t realize he’s holding.

Preston smiles. “Well. Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I could say the same for you,” Sloane replies, voice steady though her spine is taut. “You always said places like this were for pretentious assholes.”

“What can I say? People change… given the right motivation.” His finger strokes the cheek of the woman next to him as he says the last part before his eyes drift back to Sloane, then flick to me. “And you are?”

I don’t offer an answer, choosing to watch Sloane instead. Her expression hovers between social obligation and visceral distaste. Then her fingers rise, caressing my jaw—a deliberate, public declaration.

“This is Nathaniel Blackwell.”

She uses my full name. I see recognition ignite in his eyes, quickly smothered by disbelief. Her small, sharp smile tells me she sees it too.

“Of SOLAÉ?” The question comes too fast, too unsteady.

“Oh my god, I love your products!” The woman beside him brightens, gaze locking onto me with undisguised fascination. She doesn’t notice Preston’s glare or the way Sloane’s hand presses into the small of my back—five points of contact, five promises.

Preston lets out a short, uneasy laugh. “Well...” He looks between us as though reassessing an equation he can no longer solve. “I suppose that tracks.”